Definition of "thuggish"

We were Jews—and not only were we not inferior to the goyim who beat us at football, but the chances were that because we could not commit our hearts to victory in such a thuggish game, we were superior!

1969, Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint‎, New York: Vintage, published 1994, The Jewish Blues, page 56

They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.

2005 July 16, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter 17, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter; 6), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pages 361-362

[…] beside the deceitfulness of the heart and the carnality common to all men, the deep ignorance of the heathen, the abjectness of their social condition, their vain but venerated traditions, their time-honored customs of profligacy, impelling to infanticide, parricide, Thuggish murders, and cannibalism—all conflict steadily with the holiest efforts to transform them into symmetrical Christians.

1840, Nathan S. S. Beman, The Gospel Adapted to the Wants of the World: A Sermon, preached in Providence, R. I., Sept. 9, 1840‎, Boston: Crocker and Brewster, page 36

Occasionally you might have beheld us chasing up scores of Dorkings,—which had been our admiration for the twelvemonth, and massacreing them remorselessly for the public good: our turkeys and geese, too, were in continual jeopardy of their lives. But,—these Thuggish propensities notwithstanding, we took a paternal interest in our feathered family.

1859, anonymous author, Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life‎, London: MacIntosh and Hunt, page 113

There are not wanting in this Christian landThe breast remorseless and the Thuggish hand,

1871, Alfred Austin, The Golden Age: A Satire‎, London: Chapman and Hall, page 70